Top 12: 'Diamonds in the rough' in Detroit real estate

Top 12: Here are my picks for best 'diamonds in the rough' in Detroit real estate

I started to look at Detroit real estate in February 2016. That's when I pulled residential coverage into my then-new beat covering Michigan business for MLive.com. As a business reporter, I'm drawn to commercial real estate. But in my spare time, I'm addicted to home listings.

Houses in Detroit met both of those passions. Each house has a story that's part of a larger tale: What will happen to Detroit. A rehab lifts a block, which in turn lifts a neighborhood; a traditional sale affects values. Both the pace of sales and price increases are brisk; yet the prices still are depressed compared to other areas.

-- Paula Gardner, MLive.com

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Paula Gardner | PaulaGardner@mlive.com

The city's home sales numbers improved in 2016.

Sales in 2016 grew 14 percent to 4,022 units. Prices climbed 12 percent to $50,308, or about the list price of the house in the photo. And today, there are 1,223 properties listed for sale in Detroit.

That is the normalized aspect of the market.

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Paula Gardner | PaulaGardner@mlive.com

Many home sales in the city still are not 'normalized.'

There are still 30,000-plus abandoned houses in the city, and tax foreclosures remains an issue. And in many areas of the city and for severely damaged homes, obtaining a traditional mortgage is not an option.

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Paula Gardner | PaulaGardner@mlive.com

A year ago, my story on this northwest house got a lot of attention.

It's the first house that I wrote about in the city, and it may be my most-read article of all of 2016.